Posts Tagged ‘mormons’

An interesting history-related post from Religion in American History:

Call for Papers: Authority, Community, and Identity

The Religion Department at Claremont Graduate University is pleased to announce its annual Mormon Studies Conference, to be held March 6 and 7, 2015 in Claremont, California. We encourage proposals from graduate students and faculty of all disciplines. There are limited travel subsidies available for graduate student presenters. The theme for this year is “Authority, Community, and Identity.”

The study of Mormonism requires an exploration of what it means to be a religious person. Individuals exist within a community where they negotiate and maintain their identities. The conference organizers are open to a ...

An interesting history-related post from Religion in American History:

The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series in Mormon Studies

The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Mormon Studies Series welcomes academic works from established and emerging scholars that explore Mormonism in a thoroughly contextualized manner. Mormon Studies is a burgeoning field of scholarly inquiry that has been buttressed by the establishment of academic journals, professional societies, and university programs, as well as an ever growing number of books published by university presses. It intersects with and is enriched by many disciplines including history, family history, religious studies, American studies, literature, philosophy, ethics, law, political science and sociology.

Not even a Catholic blessing could save Manti Te'o and the dying pop-culture Mormon Moment he represents.

On Monday afternoon, just hours before the Alabama Crimson Tide blew out the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the BCS National Championship football game, Peggy Fletcher Stack posted a short note at the Salt Lake Tribune's Following Faith blog on the Catholic pregame rituals of ND.

An interesting history-related post from RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:

More provocative stuff on contemporary Mormonism, politics, economics, and race keeps coming out. In "The Mormon Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," at The New Republic, the historian Jackson Lears explores the longue duree of the transition from 19th-century communitarianism to 20-century capitalist boosterism in Mormon culture. Along the way (and more interestingly to me), he also discusses recent works by our friends Matt Bowman, John Turner, and others (he refers to Turner's biography of Brigham Young as "authoritative," and has kind words for Bowman's survey of Mormon history as well as Terryl Givens's work People of Paradox...

An interesting history-related post from RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:

The Untold Story of Black Mormons: DVD

Last week, I officially received my invitation to the “Mormon moment.” It came from Margaret Blair Young, a creative writing teacher at Brigham Young University. Author, editor, and film creator of several works on African American Mormons, Young has been presenting a series at Patheos on black Mormons (another good one here) that has been simply marvelous. This weekend, as my fantasy football team soundly defeated the only non-religious historian in our league, I took the time to watch her co-directed and co-produced film Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black ...

An interesting history-related post from RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:

Paul HarveyThis semester I am using Jared Farmer's wonderfully entertaining book On Zion's Mount for an M.A. class in the history of the American West. We've posted about that work previously, here and here.Religion Dispatches covered the work more extensively here. , and Juvenile Instructor (somewhat more critically) here. As John Turner posted Sunday (just as I was writing this -- great minds think alike), Farmer has has spent the summer (unbeknownst to me) putting together this excellent e-book -- an illustrated e-book, is how I would describe it -- Mormons in the Media, ...

An interesting history-related post from RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:

Paul Harvey

Here's something you don't see every day: a sympathetic look at the history of Mormonism, drawing heavily from recent scholarship by contributors and friends of the blog, inthe New Yorker. There's a bit of a weak connection with Mitt Romney's campaign at the end, and other issues that could be raised with this or that passage in the article, but I'm less interested in picking nits than highlighting Adam Gopnik's praise of and reliance on Matt Bowman's The Mormon People, John Turner's Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, Joanna Brooks's Book of Mormon Girl, ...

An interesting history-related post from RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:

by Kevin M. Schultz

While driving through the wilds of Texas a few months ago, I got into a conversation about why some conservatives hate Obama so much. I mentioned that the government was shedding jobs faster than the Bachelorette was dropping suitors. I said that taxes were the lowest they've been than throughout most of the twentieth century. I mentioned that Obamacare was initially the Republican counter to Hilary-care, a proposal that emerged from right-wing think takes. I even mentioned that Obama spoke about God more than any of his predecessors. What gives?

An interesting history-related post from RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:

John Turner

If you will excuse the shameless self-promotion, I was recently pleased to learn that my forthcoming biography of Brigham Young is available for advance purchase. In fact, it was rather surreal to have it appear while I was poring over page proofs. Just in case it sells out quickly, reserve your copy of Pioneer Prophet now! I am joking, of course.

If anyone is interested in a preview, Harvard has put together a podcast about the book, available here.

If you assign it for a class (sorry it's not shorter -- Brigham Young had quite a ...

An interesting history-related post from RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:

Paul Harvey

Today's must-read for ya'll: Matt Bowman, "Saturday's Warriors: How Mormons Went from Beard-Wearing Radicals to Clean-Cut Conformists." Aside from covering the short-lived, cute-if-cringe-inducing history of "Mormon rap," the piece expertly details the origins of the policy of "correlation" in early twentieth-century progressivism's emphasis on efficiency and order, its translation in the world of the modern corporation, its usefulness in creating a church capable of handling growth and expansion, and the struggles to translate mid-century corporate correlation into a more contemporary idiom of pluralism and self-expression. A little excerpt:Saturday’s Warrior—the title alludes to the latter ...

An interesting history-related post from RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:

Paul Harvey

I'm pleased to let you all know about the much-anticipated online journal Religion and Politics, soon to be published digitally by the Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University at St. Louis. R. Marie Griffith, formerly of Princeton and Harvard, has taken up the task of heading the Center, joined on the faculty there by Leigh Schmidt. Tiffany Stanley and Max Mueller (who has blogged here before) are serving also as editors of the journal. The editorial board includes folks such as Jackson Lears, Mark Silk, Diane Winston, Robert Wuthnow, and others.

An interesting history-related post from RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:

John Turner

As the fate of Mitt Romney (and, for those of us in Mormon History / Studies, yet another golden age of national attention surrounding all things Mormon) hangs in the balance, Mormon-Jewish relations have dominated religious news coverage over the past two weeks.

The Mormon practice of "proxy baptism" or "baptism for the dead" typically strikes outsiders as odd, but it offends some. For nearly twenty years, a variety of Jewish groups have complained about proxy baptisms done by Mormons on behalf of Holocaust victims, and the Catholic Church has also expressed concerns about the practice.

An interesting history-related post from RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:

by Paul Harvey

What a pleasure it was this weekend to verytemporarily stop the endless rounds of academic duties – job searching, juking some assessment stats, grading (and then some), survey reporting, adinfinitum – and sink a little while into Joanna Brooks’s engaging memoir/warstories/reflections on her life, The Book of Mormon Girl: Stories from an American Faith. This came outelectronically originally, and has just been published in print.

Here's an incredible conference for those of you in the New York City area to consider attending this weekend -- with an all-star lineup presenting.

Mormonism and American Politics Conference

International Affairs Building, Room 1501420 W 118th St. New York City

With a Mormon candidate for the presidency and the unprecedented media attention given to Mormons recently, this conference will take a broad view of the history of Mormon participation in American political life, from Joseph Smith’s ...

An interesting history-related post from RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:

Christopher Jones

As a follow-up to Paul's post last week on "the Mormon moment in scholarship," and in an attempt to answer the questions posed by Elesha and Curtis in the comments of that post, I'll simply point readers to a post today ("2011: The Year of the Mormon") over at the Mormon blog By Common Consent. Embedded within that post, which surveys a number of individuals, events, and trends in pop culture, politics, sports, and scholarship that kept Mormonism in the spotlight all year long, is what appears to me to be a basic (if slightly complicated) formula ...

An interesting history-related post from RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY:

Paul Harvey

Everyone is discussing the "Mormon moment" thanks to Romney and national politics, and Max Mueller's piece for Religion Dispatches discusses why non-expert pontificators feel free to pontificate on Mormonism's "weirdness" where they would do no such thing about other religious traditions. Don't miss his article.

But it may actually be more the Mormon moment in the scholarly world than anywhere else. Our own John Turner's biography of Brigham Young will be out in a little over a year or so (and scroll down for John's recent post on Joseph Smith's Journals), with Harvard University Press, and the ...

Good time to be reminded of this again while Mitt Romney endures the latest round of this particular ugliness. Over at Religion Dispatches, Joanna Brooks interviews Mason, and the two discuss the various stages of anti-Mormonism in American history -- from violent vigilantism in the mid-19th century, to the adoption of the "cult" terminology in the 1960s and ...